In this world, we face the crossroads of life in our journey home. The
way is straight and narrow, although there are things which can cause detours
in the lives of believers, if they do not acknowledge the Lord in all their ways and let
Him direct their path. There is only one road which leads to eternal happiness
and which has blessings and benefits all along the way.

Pastor Tony Harris Jr.  read it all.

  Tony is the Pastor, please visit our site (Click Here) and more important come worship with us.

The Hickory Locator Chapel

Click here for a very powerful presentation of the crucifixion of our Lord and Savior Warning if this presentation gets to graphic hit your ESC button to exit. Right click your mouse to select your interactive viewing options when it downloads.

Folk's request a prayer, or praise report, use this Christian page by sending me an email and I will post it. billy@hickorylocator.com

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August 7
Sincerely...
Sue Monk Kidd


Not long ago on a visit to the low country of South Carolina, I was taking a stroll in the woods at a time when I was struggling with self-doubt. Following a trail that took me winding through wild violets and shafts of sunlight filtering through the leaves, I came upon a long stick lying across my path. One end was coiled like the spiral handle of a cane. I picked it up, suddenly remembering a long-ago day when I was a girl and my grandfather and I were walking in a thicket of woods on his farm. That day he carried his silver-handled walking stick, thrusting it before him with a fluid swing of his arm. I studied the way he moved, the long steps he took and the way he occasionally lifted the stick to poke the brush along the trail.

"May I walk with your walking stick, Granddaddy?" I asked him. He smiled and put it into my small hands. Although it came well to my shoulders, I tried to copy his walk, the arm rhythm, the long stride, his way of poking at the brush. Suddenly my feet tangled with the stick, and down I went.

Granddaddy helped me up. "I reckon I'll have to make my best girl a walking stick all her own," he said. He plucked a stick from the floor of the woods and held it up to my waist. "Just right," he announced. Then he took out his pocketknife and began whittling away the pliant green bark. I watched mesmerized as a clean ivory rod emerged from that gnarly old stick. "Here you are, Sue," he said. "Now walk your walk."

I took the stick, knowing just what he meant. Sometimes I made skipping steps. And when I felt the woods still and deep around me, I made soft, gentle steps—what Granddaddy called moccasin steps.

Now, as that memory faded, I stood in the woods, staring at the new stick with the coiled handle. I carried it home and whittled off the bark, then returned to the woods. I walked with my new stick, thinking about the different ways I could choose to walk in life—some of them false, some true. Some of them safe imitations, some daring originals. And it seemed to me I heard the sweet cadence of my granddaddy's words become a song inside me. "Walk your walk, Sue. Walk your walk." Don't trip yourself up doing an imitation. Move to your own rhythm. Trust the music God plays inside of you.

As I moved among the trees, sometimes I skipped, and sometimes I took moccasin steps, my self-doubt evaporating into the hush of summer woods.

The train was so close I could have touched it

Trouble On the Tracks

By Ona Deane
High Point, North Carolina

When I was a little girl in Buchanan, Va., seemed everyone in my family had something to do with trains. The men were railroad workers, and my great aunts ran rooming houses where the workers stayed. My whole family was crazy about trains. Except me. I was scared to death.
Still, I loved to spend time with my great-aunt Ren and great-uncle George even if they did live right across the street from the railroad tracks. They had a big old house, a yard with two giant shade trees and a white picket fence.
My relatives liked to gather on their porch, tell stories, drink sweet tea and watch the trains go by. The roar of the engines always made me cry. Mother would run to my side and hold her hands over my ears till the offending train passed.
Uncle George took me for walks on the tracks. “Tooty,” he said one day—everyone called me that back then—“you’ve got to keep your eye on the signal light down there.” He pointed. I squinted and peered as far down as I could. “When it turns green, you’ve got to get off the tracks. Means a train is coming.”
My family moved to Baltimore when I was eight, and those lazy afternoons on the porch ended. But then in the summer of 1946 I went back to Buchanan to visit.
“Let’s take a walk,” Cousin Jean said. She was 12, I was 13. We set out, and before I knew it we were heading down a railroad track. I tried to stay calm, but I hadn’t outgrown my fear.
I thought about Uncle George and tried to catch a glimpse of the signal light—but there was no light to be seen. Even worse, a stretch of the track was up on a trestle so there was nowhere to jump in case of danger—just briar patches on both sides, which I knew were full of snakes and other creepy crawlers.
I was so relieved when we made it to the end of that part of the track. Trouble was, we’d have to head back the same way.
Halfway down the trestle I heard a train coming. I glanced back and it was barreling down the track. “Hurry, Tooty!” Jean called out. “Run!”
I followed as fast as I could. Jean managed to jump off the trestle into a yard, but I couldn’t catch up. The train was right up close to me. I froze.
Suddenly I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and a strong, comforting voice said, “Just stand still now, child.”
I looked to my left, and there stood a man wearing a cap and bib overalls. A railroad worker! My fear ebbed away, even though if I stretched out my arm I could have touched the train. That’s how close I was to it. I felt the engine’s heat around my legs. The wind in the train’s wake was so strong it could’ve sucked me under the wheels or off the trestle. But all this time the stranger held me in his gaze and kept me safe.
Just as quickly as the train came it vanished—and so did the angel of a railroad worker. But where? There was nowhere for him to go. He just disappeared. It took me years before I realized that God had sent me a real angel that day. An angel dressed in railroad clothes so I’d feel as safe and secure as I did with the relatives I loved who proudly wore the same uniform.

Holy God, the way we look at our lives has an amazing affect on the lives we actually lead. God, move in us so that we might be able to anticipate that good outcome that You are about to reveal to us. Lord, hear our prayer. Amen.

"Prayerful Living" devotional messages are written by Jane Douglass White and Rev. Ryan T. Nace and recorded by Rev. Ted Nace, Vice President of the Guideposts Foundation. To send an email message to Ted, click here.

The Prayerful Living Devotional series is brought to you through the ongoing generosity of Donna Schneider.

 
Helen wasn't the only one who needed me

Home Again
By George Champoux
Lee, Massachusetts
  The apartment didn’t feel like home. It hadn’t for some time now. Once my wife, Helen, moved into Kimball Farms Nursing Home, the apartment was simply a place to spend my nights. Seven days a week I was at Helen’s side, from the time she woke till evening. Home was where Helen was, and for 62 years we were rarely apart. Now Helen resided in heaven, far from my side. I knew I’d be with her again someday, but what was I to do until then?

After she died I looked around the apartment at all the reminders of the life we’d built together. Photos of us young, old and in-between, with our children and grandchildren. The two giant maps where we had traced in bold marker our travels cross-country in search of every bird in Birder’s Life List and Diary. Helen’s paintings of some of those places. Our birding gear and mementos. This apartment should have felt like home, but Kimball Farms had been the last place we’d been together. I needed to go back there.

The staff was hardly surprised to see me again, right at my usual time. But what was here for me now, I wondered. Now that Helen was gone?

“The residents have missed you, George,” one of the nurses mentioned. Missed me? I hadn’t even been sure the residents of Kimball Farms had realized I’d been gone.

I remembered back to Helen’s first morning as a resident. I made sure to get there bright and early. She ate her breakfast, and we talked as if nothing had changed. Then the nurse came in. “Mr. Champoux, could you wait outside while I get Helen ready for the day?” she asked. They needed about 45 minutes alone. I felt like a lump standing there waiting in the hall. So I peeked my head into the next room. “Hello,” I said cautiously. Helen’s neighbor smiled and motioned me in. I asked him how he liked Kimball Farms. What did he think of the staff and residents? What sort of activities did they have? The man put me at ease about the choice we’d made. Kimball Farms seemed like a fine place to live. A home.

Forty-five minutes flew by. “Well, I need to get back to my Helen,” I said, excusing myself. “Stop by anytime,” the man said. “I don’t get many visitors.” I noticed that about many of the residents over the next few months. I was there every day for Helen, but others had no family or friends to visit them. I made a habit of stopping by their rooms, even if it was to just say a quick hello. And as soon as Helen had gotten settled into her wheelchair for the day, we ventured into the corridors to chat with whomever we met. We didn’t treat them like patients. We treated them like friends, because that’s what they became for us.

In the tumult of Helen’s last days, I’d neglected those friends. “I guess I have some catching up to do,” I told the nurse.

I came upon our friend Faye. “When are you going to read for us?” she asked. Sometimes I’d read Helen stories in the common room and the others would listen in. “You have a wonderful speaking voice. You shouldn’t let it go to waste, George.”

Faye said it as if I were one of her students back when she was teaching. It was just the way Helen would have put it. How many times had she pushed me to try out for a role in an amateur play?

The next day I brought along a book of poems. The residents all gathered round, applauding and begging me for “one more.” I scoured the library in the activities room and found some of my favorite books of short stories. I guess I did a good job reading, because day after day my audience returned—and even grew some!

One morning I looked at the activities schedule and found myself on it. “Wednesday: Poems with George.” “Friday: Stories with George.” Some residents had a hard time following the words and meanings of poems I read. So I chose ones with a lot of rhyming and delivered them with gusto.

I read poems I had penned myself, many of which were written during World War II, the last time Helen and I were parted. Poems about how I missed my wife rang true once again. They brought back memories of the adventures we’d gone on. When I ran out of old poems, I wrote new ones for the first time in half a century.

Nowadays I’m a regular at Kimball Farms. I try to visit at least four days a week, though the staff often asks me to fill in on my days off  if there’s a cancellation on the activities calendar. I imagine I’d be a very lonely man without Kimball Farms. Helen waits for me in heaven. Until then I have plenty to keep me busy in the last home we made together.

 I got this article from The Angels on Earth Magazine.
http://www.angelsmagazine.com/

Heavenly Father, thank you for the joy of friends. May I always deserve their love. Amen.

"Prayerful Living" devotional messages are written by Jane Douglass White and Rev. Ryan T. Nace and recorded by Rev. Ted Nace, Vice President of the Guideposts Foundation. To send an email message to Ted, click here.

The Prayerful Living Devotional series is brought to you through the ongoing generosity of Donna Schneider.

This plant belongs in the composter,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head as I surveyed what was left of my latest attempt to grow a gardenia—nothing but mottled yellow leaves and shriveled brown buds that hung limply off the brittle branches. Heaven knows, I had tried everything my mother taught me about caring for houseplants—more light, less water, spraying, fertilizing, re-potting, even prayer—but nothing seemed to work.

I wish Mama were here now, I thought. Mother’s Day was coming up, the second one since her death, and the pain of losing her was still so fresh.

There is a Mother’s Day tradition I follow of wearing a red flower if one’s mother is alive and a white one if she is not. I had hoped that cultivating a white gardenia, Mama’s favorite flower, would help me through the grief of her passing.

Mama had a way with all things green. My sister and I always joked, “Mama could make a telephone pole sprout leaves and bear fruit.”

Why can’t I? I thought. Still, I couldn’t bear to throw the dead plant away. Instead, I stuffed it into a dark corner of our bathroom. I didn’t water it, didn’t prune it. I just left it there until I could deal with it.

My husband had asked me if I was going to wear a white corsage to church that Mother’s Day. And wear my grief like a badge for all to see?

“No,” I told him. “I know it’s been over a year, but I’m just not ready yet.” And I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready, I added silently.

Sunday morning I woke up early to get dressed and made up for church. Still groggy, I walked to the bathroom. Suddenly I was jolted awake by a pleasant scent. Did someone spray air freshener in there? I wondered. I pushed the door open and stepped into the bathroom.

That morning I knew I would be ready to wear a white corsage for Mama. In that dark corner, bright as if it had a light of its own, bloomed a perfect white gardenia.
By Sally Whittington
Albany, Oregon